We arrived at Akron and I said farewell to my new found friend. A few minutes later the train from Cleveland arrived and we all boarded the train. Interestingly, the Cleveland train was pretty packed and there were some park rangers moving through the train offering nature talks and pointing out the scenes outside as we rolled through the countryside at a leisurely pace. Vestibule riding was not possible so I just enjoyed the ride. As we got nearer to Cleveland Rockside station the clouds broke up and we had a bright blue sky and lots of heat and humidity. As we pulled into Rockside I spotted Ed standing there. We piled my stuff into the car and headed over to Olmsted Falls. Freeway driving and Ed's lead foot haha. We decided to go to Olmsted Falls for a change, it's only a couple/few miles west of Berea. We've never been there before. There is an old depot there with a model railroad club. There were a couple guys there and we made friends with them as we sat on the benches next to the tracks, 15 feet away. We didn't have long to wait, the first train came through at full track speed, 60-70 mph. Norfolk Southern didn't let us down, we had 9 trains in 90 minutes.
Ed drove me back to Rockside station but the train was late coming in so we just sat and talked a while. Finally the train came in and I boarded. Again, the trip to Akron was smooth and uneventful.
That's when things changed !!!!!!!! The brakeman, and 2 conductors were actually waiting for me to get off the train and motioned me to come over to them as soon as they spotted me.
They said :
"You are not going to ride this train back to Canton .............. you are going to ride in the cab!".
"WHAT !!!!!!".
"Grab your bags and climb up, you're authorized"
"Whoa!, are you sure?"
"Yep"
"Awe man!"
There's 3 seats in the cab, Engineer, brakeman and Dave. They gave me the window seat, and off we went! FPA-4's are designed for 95 mph mainline hauling, but we kept it down to 15-20 all the way haha. I stuck my 18-35 lens and flash on my camera and started shootin every hundred yards or so haha. All my shots through the windshield were shot "blind", I just held the camera up and pointed it out. They came out pretty nice! Also, the brakeman told me that there was a CSX train going to come across above us, we timed it perfectly! I was ready!
We finally came back into Canton under a brilliant blue sky and a low sun at 7 pm. The end of a gorgeous day. Robin was at the station waiting for the train and shooting a couple pics. I stayed and chatted for a while then made my way home, exhausted.
